MIT and Harvard release working papers on open online courses

Reveal how students learn and how technologies can facilitate effective teaching both on-campus and online

January 23, 2014

The cover image for the series of working papers released by MIT and Harvard University today. The papers analyzed 17 online courses offered on the edX platform. (Credit: Andrew Ho and Isaac Chuang)

MIT and Harvard University have released a series of working papers (open access) based on 17 online courses offered on the edX platform.

Run in 2012 and 2013, the courses analyzed drew upon diverse topics — from ancient Greek poetry to electromagnetism — and an array of disciplines, from public health to engineering to law.

The working paper series features detailed reports about individual courses; these reports reveal differences and commonalities among massive open online courses (MOOCs). In the coming weeks, data sets and interactive visualization tools will also be made available.

Led by Isaac Chuang, a professor of electrical engineering and computer science at MIT, and Andrew Ho, an associate professor in Harvard’s Graduate School of Education, the collaborative research effort was in service of a mutual goal — “to research how students learn and how technologies can facilitate effective teaching both on-campus and online” — part of a mission statement established when MIT and Harvard joined to form edX, the not-for-profit online learning platform, in May 2012.

The papers analyze an average of 20 gigabytes of data per course and draw on interviews with faculty and course teams as well as student metrics.

Key takeaways

Course completion rates, often seen as a bellwether for MOOCs, can be misleading and may at times be counterproductive indicators of the impact and potential of open online courses. The researchers found evidence of large numbers of registrants who may not have completed a course, but who still accessed substantial amounts of course content.

Most MOOC attrition happened after students first registered for a course. On average, 50 percent of people left within a week or two of enrolling. After that window, attrition rates decreased substantially. The average probability of a student ceasing to engage in the second week of the course declined to 16 percent.

Given the “massive” scale of some MOOCs, small percentages are often still large numbers of students — and signify a potentially large impact. Demographic information about registrants can be misleading without context. The most typical course registrant in these initial courses was a male with a bachelor’s degree, age 26 or older. However, that profile describes fewer than one in three registrants (222,847, or 31 percent).

Looking ahead, Chuang and Ho emphasize that the rise of MOOCs has sparked and encouraged experimentation in teaching and in pedagogical research, benefiting both teachers and students. New tools, they contend, give faculty more flexibility and offer novel opportunities to run experiments and gather data. Likewise, online learning platforms put students in the driver’s seat, allowing an individual to engage in a manner that best suits his or her needs.

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comments 5

Love this concept of free info/education/training for the world, but still pay to get the degree/graduation. Love the idea that a person in a 3rd world country can log in and get free MIT/Harvard/Princeton online top world education.

Maybe this works great also on subjects you need to take 2x, so this gives you a free try at it first… then you can take again as needed or take in your spare time, or check that you even like/want to learn the info.

My real hope long term is they get 1,000′s of these online courses and then they are taught by some of the best teachers in the world. Eventually they allow the students to grade the teachers, or learning style… then if I can’t understand the material taught by this teacher or this way, I can easily substitute that lesson plan from another angle, or diff. teacher. Over time the best way to learn a subject (per teacher or per method) floats to the top, or is divided up by different styles. Thus over time the world has access to the ultimate teaching materials for every subject and every way of learning (for me). I can then track what I have learned and when there is a key building block at a lower level I have to know before advancing on, I can make sure I have those foundation points (maybe more true for math/science courses, but literature, etc would also apply this prerequisite design)

MOOCs and Open Educational Resources are great. But, the next step is for the owners of brick-and-mortar facilities to cooperate by providing places where students:

1) can take proctored exams (e.g. at a library or local community college) for perhaps a small fee to help cover the cost of the room, and

2) can meet face-to-face for discussion, coffee, pizza, etc. once again for a small fee to cover the cost of the room (The online course can and should facilitate this, too, with discussion questions, problem sets, and other group activities focused on course material.)

And, business owners, public & private employment agencies, and college student records units should cooperate by enabling students to have their learning experiences officially registered (if they want) to help employers and would be employees find one another.

Think of it as a highly sophisticated date match service. This service (or these services) could also help students identify near-by colleagues who have also signed up for a course, or expressed interest in taking a course.

Once two or more near-by students have expressed interest in a course, the service could hook them up with a near-by facility where they could meet face-to-face to work through their lessons together.

This service, or ensemble of services, should also be able to advise students on what courses they could take to advance their careers.

It’s quite a funny coincidence for me, but actually I did take the Harvard Mooc in ancient Greek poetry last March, but dropped out of it in June. Professor Nagy was just too tricky in his exam questions. No matter how hard I studied, I could never figure out just what answers he wanted. He drove me crazy and destroyed my self-esteem. In any other literature course where I worked that hard, I never got less than a grade of “B.”

Next I want to take a course in Astronomy. I can’t see a professor in that field playing the trickster. I’d expect the test questions to be forthright and honest.